Dialogic Cinephilia - June 13, 2019

Barber, William."Racist Gerrymandering Created a GOP Stronghold in the South. We Must Fight Back." Democracy Now (June 10, 2019) ["Longtime civil rights leader Rev. Dr. William Barber joins us to respond to his conviction Thursday for trespassing during a 2017 protest against gerrymandering and attacks on healthcare at the North Carolina Legislature. Barber had refused to leave the General Assembly as ordered, after he organized a sit-in at the legislative building when Republican leaders refused to meet with him about concerns with voter ID requirements and redistricting plans that would weaken the power of the black vote. “We must start connecting systemic racism, most seen through systemic voter suppression and gerrymandering, poverty, the lack of healthcare, environmental devastation and the war economy,” says Barber, the former president of the North Carolina NAACP and a leader of the national Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This Wednesday he will join faith leaders and religious groups in Washington, D.C., for a march to the White House to protest the Trump administration’s attacks on the nation’s most vulnerable communities, and next week he hosts the three-day Poor People’s Campaign Moral Action Congress in Washington, D.C., that will draw hundreds of people from across the country for a presidential forum, where both Republican and Democratic candidates will speak."]

Benton, Michael. Theme: Abortion/Theme: Couples Coping with Trauma/Theme: Skateboarding/Theme: Neo-Noir. Dialogic Cinephilia (Future Film Course Plan)

Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019) [MB - Excellent critique of a popular play's historical misrepresentation of the Lehman family saga (also makes the connection to that other theatrical sensation Hamilton) and monopoly-finance capital's dependence on slavery (throughout the system - not just the South) to build immense wealth.]

Engh, Catherine. "Assembling Climate Change Pedagogies for the Humanities." Center for the Humanities (May 28, 2019)



Lenker, Maureen Lee. "Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon revisit their lesbian neo-noir Bound." Entertainment Weekly (June 6, 2019)

Luxenberg, Steve. "Separate and Unequal." On the Media (March 8, 2019)  ["Throughout the 1800s, the question at the heart of nearly every political, cultural and academic conversation dealt in some capacity with whether Black Americans were eligible for full citizenship. Our collective understanding of 19th-century racial politics depends on the landmark civil rights legislation that came out of the era. One notorious decision was Plessy v. Ferguson, the case in which the Supreme Court confirmed the constitutionality of racial separation, helping to pave the way for nearly 60 years of Jim Crow laws. Though the decision was overturned by the 1954Brown v. Board of Education decision, the de facto segregation Plessy codified continues into the present. But at the time, Plessy wasn’t deemed newsworthy — at least not by the white-dominated, partisan press. To contextualize the road to Plessy, Bob spoke with Steve Luxenberg, author of the new book, Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America's Journey from Slavery to Segregation."]

McCall, Leyla. "Leyla McCall Has The Capitalist Blues." World Cafe (May 8, 2019) ["As you may guess from the title of her third solo album, Leyla McCalla tackles social and economic issues pretty directly on The Capitalist Blues. The multi-instrumentalist and Carolina Chocolate Drops alumna sings about everything from injustice and poverty to her daughter's experience with elevated levels of lead. And although the topics are heavy, the music is danceable — a treatment informed by the troubadour traditions of McCalla's Haitian roots and the Cajun and Zydeco traditions of her adopted home in New Orleans. In this session, McCalla talks about her parents' work as Haitian human rights activists and how the history of her people and the attitudes of her parents inspired her to tackle social issues through art. And McCalla performs live."]

Puhr, Thomas. "Giving by Stealing: Denys Arcand’s The Fall of the American Empire." Film International (June 13, 2019)

MB - Rarely have I come across a film that portrays the chaotic and fractured nature of teen life (even at the best of times) without descending into grotesque stereotypes, banal moral messages, or hallmark hopefulness - this is a great example of a film that escapes this while retaining a sincere humanistic portrayal of the people involved (everyone).
On another note, we seem to have a 21st Century genre of skateboarding films.